Goal realized

This is pretty cool. It won't be very cool to anyone but me, but in 13 hours, I will be officially hired on as an adoption assessor with All God's Children. For those who remember, this is the same organization that our family used to expand itself in bringing home Elijah. I cannot speak highly enough about this adoption agency. They were first rate in every single thing they did. It was after our adoption was completed and I was wishing that I could use my social work skills to benefit others on a ministry basis that God placed in my head to become an adoption assessor myself. What better way to use my skills than to assist others in bringing home their own children from the community, state, country, and around the globe? I set out to earn my assessor certification and took vacation time from work to complete much of the necessary coursework. I did this specifically with the goal of being hired on by All God's Children. I never asked the organization about doing this and was never given any promises that I would be hired on. In fact, after earning my certification, I first approached All God's Children and was told there wasn't enough work and it likely wouldn't work out anyway. While I was disappointed, I never doubted that there was another reason for me earning my certification. The call felt too certain.

Through an unusual set of events, I was hired on with A Center for Homestudies and Placement Services in May 2008 for my first contract work as an assessor. I remain very very grateful to Rima (director) for bringing me on and coaching me through my first homestudies. I continue to contract with this organization and also think very highly of her and her dedication and professionalism towards those who seek her services.

Tomorrow, however, barring any unforseen circumstances, a specific dream of mine will be realized. The Ohio director of All God's Children (different from the director I talked to over a year ago) has indicated she intends to hire me on as a contractor. That is cool.

Sometimes you get what you pay for

For a guy who can't spend $20 without searching and researching over and over to find out if I can buy the same thing elsewhere for $19.27, the concept of voluntarily paying a $1000 or more for an agency to do the same thing that another agency can do goes against nearly every fiber of my body. The fibers that it doesn't go against, however, are honesty and integrity. I was always taught that those things were supremely important, and I have come to believe that intensely. One example of this is that we purposely searched for a name for Justin that meant "integrity" when he was born. Shy of naming him some obscure name that would have gotten him beat up regularly, we agreed on "Justin" meaning "truth and righteousness". So, we have decided to retract our application to our original homestudy agency. They simply did not pass the "smell test" as it were. In fact, they simply stunk from the very first phone call. I don't tend to complain about things too much to others who do things for me. Sure, I might complain to Maren (especially about 40 degree temperature drops in less than 16 hours....good grief), but generally I keep most complaints to myself. I am in this business, however. I complete homestudies. I know what their requirements are, and I have a fair understanding of good business practices. Holt International suggested we write a letter of complaint. I did. I probably went overboard. It was nine pages, single-spaced. Hmm. That might be overkill. But, I wanted to be detailed so I included all of our email communications to demostrate the extent that we went in trying to make this work. So, now we are trying to connect with another agency. We will keep you posted.

At what price ethics?

Greg here.
I remember when I served on the board for American Heritage Girls when some dialogue was occuring on the spirtiual differences between AHG and Girls Scouts of America. Part of the dialogue revolved around the greater cost to each family to have a girl in American Heritage Girls versus having her in Girl Scouts and that some families had their girls join Girl Scouts because of this. The Girl Scouts have seriously left its original roots and has become heavily feminist (and all the negatives that go with that designation) and very much openly stands against Christianity and the values contained within that belief system. The executive director made a comment at the time that she is always amazed when people will sell their beliefs for so little a cost. In other words, people will choose a organization to save a few bucks even when they know that organization stands against their stated beliefs. That has always stuck with me. I found her statment to be simple yet very powerful. In fact, it has haunted me since then wondering for what exactly would I sell my beliefs. It has been pretty scary a few times. I have found temptation in selling my beliefs for mere pennies. Forget millions. While I can't recall a time when I actually sold my beliefs, I do know that there have been times when I have had to actively campaign against myself from doing so. Perhaps the most recent was when I discovered that we had failed to report $750 on last year's income tax. Almost all of that money was paid to me in cash over the course of the year so there is no paper trail for it. It was very tempting to simply let it go. Certainly the IRS would never have found out about it. They couldn't have. I even thought about simply overreporting my income by $750 this year to "make up for it". In the end, I completed an amended return and mailed in the extra $106 we owed the IRS. All the while, I knew that our likelyhood for audit or some other problem was exponentially increased. Well, probably not exponentially, but still.

OK, so what in the world does all this have to do with our adoption. We have sent in and paid for an application to a particular homestudy agency. After we and they agreed on costs, after we sent in the application, after we paid the application fee, and after they verified receipt of the application, they came back and told us they were adding new fees for us that would total about $90 extra dollars per visit beyond what we had originally agreed. After complaining about this, they agreed to reduce it to an extra $65 per visit beyond our original agreement. I am still fired up about this, and we have been dealing with it for several weeks.

So the question is this. Do we continue with this agency? In some ways, the easy answer is "Absolutely not". This is not such an easy answer however, because to change to a different agency would likely cost an extra $1000 by the time everything is said and done. So, do we go with an agency whose integrity is now seriously in question to save a thousand bucks. Or, do we switch agencies knowing that the cost to us would be substantial?

Any thoughts are most welcome.